Chapter 244 of The Signature
The second my mom’s in the room, I can feel her eyes doing that full sweep of everything, head tilted like she’s trying to solve a puzzle in three seconds. They land on the crinkly blue emesis bag in my hand, then on my face, and I see her whole expression sharpen like she’s just now realizing how bad I actually feel.
“Okay, what’s going on,” she says, already moving closer, and there’s that edge in her voice that means this is not a casual check‑in.
Jamie answers for me. “She spiked to 102.7 this morning,” he says, steady and matter‑of‑fact. “She’s been nauseated all morning. They gave her Zofran and Tylenol a little bit ago, but she’s still feeling pretty awful.”
My mom’s eyes cut from Jamie back to me, and I can practically see her filing every word away. “Okay,” she says, and her voice is softer now but still all business. “Aria, I need you to tell me exactly what’s going on. Where does it hurt? Is it your hip, your stomach, your head, all of the above? When did this start, has it gotten worse since they gave you meds, have you thrown up or just felt like you’re going to?”
Mom’s voice is right there before I’m even fully done turning my head, all those questions braided together so tight I can’t find the ends.
“It’s… mostly my stomach,” I manage, because that seems like the easiest piece to grab. Talking makes my chest feel tight, like I’ve already run out of air. “And my head a little. The hip is just… sore, not like before.”
I have to stop and breathe, jaw clenching while I ride out a fresh wave of nausea. The bag rustles when I pull it closer to my mouth.
“It was just feeling gross at first,” I add, quieter. “Now it’s… worse. I haven’t actually thrown up, I just… keep thinking I’m going to.”
She’s already layering more on top. “Okay, so hip’s just sore, not like before. Has the pain changed since last night? Any new dizziness, chest tightness, trouble catching your breath? Do you feel worse than you did earlier?”
“It’s… kind of all just…” The sentence unravels before I can grab it. “The pain’s worse, but it’s more my stomach and my head.” I swallow, jaw tight as my stomach rolls. The bag crackles when I pull it a little closer. “I get lightheaded when I sit up too fast. Breathing’s okay, I just feel… gross.”
She’s already chasing it. “Is it constant or coming in waves? Have you actually thrown up or just felt like you’re going to? Do you feel worse than you did earlier?”
“I haven’t actually—” I have to stop, swallowing hard as my stomach flips. The bag crackles when I drag it closer to my face. “It just comes in really bad waves. I feel worse than I did when you left last night.”
My eyes drift shut, because even that much talking makes everything swim. Jamie’s fingers tighten around my hand. “Fever hit 102.7 about an hour ago,” he says, his voice doing the steady thing mine can’t. “She’s been queasy all morning, lots of dry heaving but no actual vomiting. They’re thinking it’s the hip infection and the pneumonia together knocking her flat.”
My eyes are half-closed when Jamie’s phone buzzes against the rail. He fishes it out one-handed without letting go of me, glances at the screen, then lifts it to his ear.
“Hey, Mum,” he says, voice going softer. There’s a little pause while she talks. “Yeah, we’re still up here… No, they haven’t taken her down yet. Okay. Yeah, I can come down. Lobby’s fine.”
He hangs up and blows out a breath through his nose. “Mum and Dad are here,” he says, mostly to the room but it lands on me anyway. “They want me to meet them in the lobby.”
He finally loosens his fingers from around mine, giving my hand one last squeeze. “Riley, can you keep an eye on her for a minute?” he asks, like it’s automatic, like my mother isn’t three feet away.
“Of course.” Riley responds
Then he touches the side of the bed with his knuckles as he steps back. “I’ll be right back, babe.” And he kissed my forehead and walked out the door. Mom moves up to the side of my bed. She puts the back of her hand on my forehead.
“Your still burning up kiddo. Do you need anything while he’s gone? Ice chips? Cool washcloth? Want me to see if they can’t bring something for this nausea?”
“I’m NPO mom. I can’t eat or drink.” I remind her. “But I wouldn’t mind a cool rag for my head. I’m boiling!”
Lisa smoothed a hand over my hair. “Okay, I can do that. I’ll go bug the nurses’ station and see if they’ve got a cold washcloth or some ice we can rig up for your head.”
Her hand slipped away and I heard her footsteps heading for the door, the soft click as it opened and shut leaving the room a little quieter.
“Who the hell is my mother right now?” I asked, blinking over at Riley.
Riley let out a quiet snort. “She always cranks it up when there’s an audience.” She shifted a little closer, fingers worrying at the edge of the blanket. “Hey, I know this is not really the moment, but… I am sorry about the other night.”
I frowned at her. “No. You don’t have to… we’re not doing that right now.”
Riley leaned in carefully, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “I love you,” she whispered into my hair. “So much. I hate that you’re this sick and I can’t just fix it.”
I let my head rest against her. “I love you too, Riles. Always.”
Mom pushed the door back open a minute later, a little out of breath. “Okay. They gave me two ice packs,” she said, lifting them like evidence. “They said one should go on the back of your neck and one on your forehead.”
Between the two of them, Riley and Mom eased one behind my head, and then mom thumbed the bed control to lean me back just enough that I could keep the other one resting across my forehead without having to hold it.
“Thank you mom.” I mumble already feeling less hot.
“Oh baby it’s not problem at all. By the way, Erica sends her love. She wanted to be here but she had to stay home so she could go to her classes.” Lisa said sounding like anything but herself.
“It’s ok. I will call her when, if, I start feeling better.”
That ‘if’ was doing a lot of work. I was so over all of it – the fever, the sweat, the way every inch of me ached and nothing felt clean or normal. I couldn’t eat, I could barely move, I hadn’t even peed without an audience.
“I just want to feel better,” I blurted, and my voice cracked right as the tears finally spilled over.
“Oh, honey,” Mom said immediately, her hand landing on my knee through the blanket. “I know. I know you do.”
Riley edged closer, fingers brushing my arm. “Hey. We’ve got you, okay? You’re gonna get through this.”
The door clicked and swung open again. Jamie backed in first, juggling a little vase of flowers and a teddy bear in the crook of one arm.
He turned around with this soft, hopeful smile that disappeared the second he saw my face. “Hey—” He cut off, eyes going wide. “Oh, hey, hey. Why are you crying, baby?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” The words hit my throat before I could stop them. My voice came out thin and ugly and too loud in the stupid quiet room. “I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be sick anymore, I don’t want to go for surgery again, I just… I just want to go home.”
It all started tumbling out, faster and faster, like someone had cut a string.
“I miss my bed,” I choked. “I miss my room, and my blankets, and not having wires on me, and not having people poking me every five seconds. I’m so tired of being in this stupid hospital room. I’m tired of feeling gross, and nauseous, and scared, and pretending I’m fine when I’m not. I don’t want to do this again, Jamie. I don’t want to do any of this again. I just want it to be over.”
I could feel the tears running hot down my cheeks, my chest stuttering like it couldn’t decide between breathing and sobbing.
“I just want to be done,” I whispered, even though it came out more like a broken little gasp. “I want my life back. I want… I want everything that isn’t this.”
For a second nobody said anything. The room just hummed and beeped like it always did, totally wrong for how everything inside my chest felt like it had just exploded.
Then Jamie and Riley moved at the same time.
Jamie slid onto the edge of the bed on my right, careful of wires and IV tubing, and Riley shifted in closer on my left. I barely had time to register it before their arms were around me, pulling me into this awkward, too-tight, perfect sandwich of warmth.
I folded. I let myself lean into them, forehead pressed against Jamie’s shoulder, Riley’s arm banded across my back. The sobs that had been trying to sneak out all afternoon finally just… went. Ugly, hiccupy, snotty, all of it.
“I know,” Jamie murmured against my hair, his hand moving in slow circles between my shoulder blades. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve got you, Ari,” Riley said quietly on my other side, her fingers squeezing my arm like she could hold me here by sheer force. “We’re not going anywhere, okay?”
My mom was still on my left side by the head of the bed, right where she’d been when Jamie walked in. Riley had kind of wedged herself in next to her, half-perched on the mattress, but Mom’s hand stayed on my shoulder, warm and a little shaky.
“Sweetheart,” she said, voice softer than it had been all day. “Okay. Okay. We hear you.”
Something in me snapped at that. Not a clean crack—more like a splinter, sharp and messy, driving in deeper the more I tried not to move. Of course they “heard” me. They were all standing right there, watching me fall apart like it was a show.
Heat rushed up my neck, behind my eyes, into my ears. I tried to say something—anything—but what came out was this ugly, broken sound that wasn’t even a word. My chest squeezed down tight, too tight, like someone had cinched a belt around my ribs. The air from the cannula suddenly felt wrong, too cold, too much, hissing against the inside of my nose.
“Okay,” Jamie said, somewhere to my left. “Aria—”
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t look at any of them. I turned my face away and it tugged the plastic hard across my cheek. The cannula bit into the raw spot under my nose and panic shot straight through me.
“Get it off,” I choked. My voice came out high and strangled. “Get it off—”
I got my hand up before anyone could stop me. My fingers caught the tubing and yanked. One prong tore halfway out of my nostril, the other dug in deeper, and the sting of it lit my brain on fire. The hissing got louder. It felt like the whole room was made of plastic and tape and all of it was stuck to me.
“Hey—hey, leave that.” Jamie’s voice was closer, sharper now. Hands closed around my wrist, not painful but solid enough that I couldn’t rip the thing out. “Aria, don’t pull, you need that.”
“I don’t—” I tried to jerk my hand free. Everything blurred at the edges. There were too many people, too much watching, too much everything. “It hurts, just get it off—”
“Riley, move for a sec,” Jamie said, and I heard the scrape of the chair as she backed away.
“I’m right here,” Riley murmured, from somewhere near my feet. Her voice was thick, like she’d been crying too. “Aria, I’m right here, okay?”
I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t see anyone. My vision tunneled down to white and the green line of the monitor in the corner of my eye, jumping faster and faster. My heart thudded so hard it hurt. I couldn’t get a full breath no matter how much the oxygen hissed.
“Aria.” Jamie’s tone changed again, low and firm. I felt his fingers slide the cannula back into place, quick and practiced, the plastic lifting off the sore spots just enough that it didn’t burn as bad. Tape tugged against my cheek as he smoothed it down.Then his hand left my wrist and came up to my face.
Warm fingers curled along my jaw, thumb just under my cheekbone. He didn’t squeeze, just guided, turning my head away from the window, away from Mom’s shape at the side of the bed, away from whatever expression Riley was making. My eyes skittered everywhere, trying to land on anything else, but he followed, steady as gravity.
“Aria.” Closer now. I could feel his breath on my forehead. “Eyes on me.”
I made myself drag my gaze up.
For a second, the rest of the room just…fell away. It was only him: the familiar light stubble on his jaw, the faint crease between his brows that meant he was worried. His eyes were soft and focused and completely locked on mine, like there was no one else in the world he could possibly be looking at.
My chest still hurt. My nose burned. The cannula felt huge and foreign and wrong. But the sound of the room fuzzed out around the edges, like somebody had turned the volume down on everything that wasn’t his voice.
“Good,” he said, a tiny nod. “Stay with me. Right here, okay?”
The monitor behind my head started beeping faster, that higher, urgent rhythm it did when my heart rate jumped. It felt like it was yelling my panic out
“Okay,” Jamie said, still holding my gaze. “Stay with me. You’re doing fine.”
I was absolutely not doing fine. The monitor behind my head kicked its beeping up another notch, faster, more shrill, like it was arguing with him on my behalf.
“Listen to me, not that,” he said, a quick glance toward the screen. His thumb smoothed once along my cheekbone, just enough that I felt it. “We’re gonna slow this down. You don’t have to take a big breath, just a little one. In…right now.”
I dragged in a thin, shaky sip of air through my nose. It caught halfway, rattling over the junk in my lungs.
“Good,” he said immediately, like I’d just done something impressive. “That’s it. That’s all I’m asking for. Now hold it for a second—one…two…”
My heart hammered against my ribs. The beeping chased it, a half-step behind.
“Let it go.” His voice dropped even softer. “Nice and easy.”
I pushed the air back out, more like a stutter than a breath. It still felt wrong, like breathing through a straw full of gravel, but the world didn’t tilt the way I thought it would. His hand stayed on my face. The cannula hissed. Nobody else touched me.
“Again,” he said. “Just like that. In.”
I did it because he asked, because his eyes were right there and I didn’t know what else to do. Another small, uneven inhale. Another beat of holding. Another shaky exhale.
The monitor didn’t like it—it screamed even louder, jumping into that high, urgent tone that usually meant nurses came running. My heart rate number flashed red in the corner of the screen.
Somewhere behind Jamie, I heard movement in the hall. Quick footsteps, the swish of scrubs.
The door bumped open. “Everything okay in—”
The new voice cut off mid-sentence, like whoever it belonged to had walked in expecting one kind of problem and found a different one instead.
